Homemade Granola

In January I signed up for Michelle Bridges 12wbt.  While I know there is nothing more boring than reading about someone's new exercise regime or wacky diet I must confess I have been loving this one!  I love her food plans!  I love her exercise plans!  I love her no nonsense, straight to the point video messages!  I love that queer little accent she appears to have!  The woman has constant Pep!  And of course, she now has Commando!!!!!

I have been whacking her weekly menus up on the fridge and pretty religiously following them.  She includes a shopping list each week too which makes it pretty simple.  I have been mixing up her exercise sessions along with my own running and my weekly visit to a personal trainer.  (I've entered in to the Run for the Kids in April which is 15km, hence the running, running and more running!)  I may also have stopped drinking alcohol... and that was a real killer!

One of my favourite breakfast or daytime snacky treats has been this homemade granola.  It's a bit of a mixture between a paleo recipe my sister sent me and a Sarah Wilson IGS one.  It is super simple, yummy and very moreish so don't over eat it!  

Whack 2 cups of nuts (almonds, cashews, pecans, walnuts, pepitas) in a food processor with a tablespoon of  ground cinnamon, a teaspoon each of ground nutmeg and all spice and a quarter of a teaspoon of ground cloves and ground ginger.  Cut up about 8 to 10 pitted dates and pop those in too.  Give it a big whizz until its all chopped up to your satisfaction.  Pour that nutty mix into a big bowl with 2 cups of flaked coconut and 2 cups of rolled oats.  Melt about a third of cup of coconut oil in your microwave and then mix a dollop or two of proper maple syrup into that.  Poor the runny stuff into your nutty stuff and mix it all together nicely.

Spread it out nice and flat onto some oven trays and bake away on 180 for about 30-35 minutes.  You will need to hang around your oven turning the mixture every now and then as it cooks from the outside in so use a lovely big spatula to turn it all over, reflatten and spread it out and cook some more.

When you're happy with it's golden appearance leave it on your trays to cool.  Try small pinches of it as you potter around your kitchen cleaning up because apparently you are the only one who knows how to clear plates and load the dishwasher!  When cool, pour into some containers and store it in the freezer.  It keeps nice and fresh in there and lasts for ages - although mine disappears within a week or two!  You can eat it straight from the freezer without a problem.  I normally have a dollop of yoghurt on it with some berries mixed in.  Or I take a small little snack tub of it to work to tide me over to lunchtime.

Hope you found it as yummy as I do!

Christmas Pudding Day

 

I declared today Christmas Pudding Day. 

 

Normally Christmas Pudding Day occurs when my lovely sister is in town since it really is a two person job to hold the calico full of yummy puddingy mix whilst tying it up with string!  Since she couldn't just flit over on a whim from Tassie, I had to do it myself!

 

 

Really, why bother cleaning up the breakfast dishes before you start!  Just dive right in and make some more mess. 

 

My fruit has been soaking in kahlua for about a week or so already.  I dumped all my dry ingredients into the soaked fruity mixture... which of course included a healthy bag or so of choc chips, mixed it all up and came up with this mess....

 

 

...dollop it all out on to a pudding cloth...

 

 

...mine has a Christmas pud recipe on it but I follow a different recipe.  I purchased a few of these a couple of years ago from Spotlight but this is the lucky last one.  I soaked this in my big pot of boiling water before I put the pudding into the centre of it so it was sanitized before use.  I also dust the cloth lightly with plain flour so the pudding won't stick to it.

 

Tie your string around the the calico nice and tight, getting rid of us much air as possible.  This is where a second set of hands comes in useful as one person can hold up the pud, pulling the cloth nice and tight and the second person can tie the string around and around!

 

Whack a saucer into the bottom of your saucepan of boiling water.  You will hear the constant tingle of that plate and know that you are not burning the bottom of your pudding and that the water is happily boiling away constantly cooking your lovely pud.

 



 

Make sure you tie the excess fabric and string around the handle of your pot so you don't set your kitchen alight with the gas flame from your cooktop!

 

I boiled that pudding for three hours and will then hang it out on a hook to dry till Christmas Day.  I'll boil it up again on the day for an hour or so and then probably eat too much of it with raspberries, custard, ice-cream and icing sugar!

 

Don't forget to make your son take ridiculous photos of you holding up your heavy pudding to share with the world!

 

 

 

What can you do for the three hours your pudding is boiling away?!  Certainly not housework!  I used that time to play around with new headers for the blog, mucked around with the widths and basically stuffed things up, then spent about the same amount of time googling ways to fix it!  Whoops!

Sweet Potato and Lentil Curry

This was our delicious dinner last night!

• 2 tablespoons  Sharwood's Rogan Josh Curry Paste
• 3/4 cup red lentils
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 480 g sweet potatoes, cut into 2cm cubes
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
• 2 1/2 cups chicken stock (made with stock cubes) (I just used whatever stock I had in the cupboard!)

Heat a medium saucepan and add the curry paste. Cook, while stirring, for 1 minute or until fragrant. Add the lentils, bay leaves, onion, sweet potato, ginger and chicken stock. Bring to the boil and reduce the heat to low.  Or until the sweet potato is cooked. Season with salt and black pepper.   I served it on sume jasmine rice with some puppodums (spelling!!??).

Very easy and very yummy!  And Darren ate it... no meat and all! 

Are you married to a man that thinks that if there is no meat in the dinner then clearly it's not 'dinner'?

Spinach, Olive and Pine Nut Tart

My cookbook collection is an embarrassment of riches.  It's quite embarrassing really since I don't really cook... much.  Generally, my husband is the chef, and when he's away for work I splash out and have toast... or cereal... or chocolate.

If I cook at all, it must be simple and quick and this Spinach, Olive and Pine Nut tart was sooooo easy and fast and since Darren's away there is enough left over for me to have for lunch, and then tea again!

Above is what it's suppsed to look like...

and here's mine.

2 sheets of frozen shortcrust pastry, thawed

2 teaspoons of olive oil

1 red onion, finely sliced

200g baby spinach leaves

1 cup pitted kalamata olives

125g Philadlephia Block Cream Cheese, broken into 2cm pieces

4 eggs

1/2 cup of cream

salt and pepper to taste

2 tablespoons of pine nuts

Press pastry into the base of a lightly greased 33cmx9cm rectangular fluted tart pan with removable base. Pastry will need to overlap slightly and be trimmed to fit.  Prick well with a fork and bake in a hot oven 200c for 8-10 minutes until lightly golden.

Heat the oil in a large frypan, add onion and saute for 2-3 minutes until softened.  Stir in spinach and olives, cook a further 1-2 minutes until spinach has just wilted. Cool slightly.

Spoon spinach mixture over the base of pastry and scatter over Philly chunks.  Whisk together the eggs, cream and seasonings, then pour over spinach mixture.  Top with pine nuts and bake in a moderately slow oven 160c for 20-30 minutes until set.  Slice and serve with a green salad.

This tastes just as good cold!

Weekends

Baked these 'reindeer' cupcakes lastnight for my son's cupcake day at school.  When he saw them this morning he laughed... and not in a good way!

Took my baby girl to the doctor after she had been bitten 32 times by mosquitos, 12 of which are on her poor little face.  Gave her a non-drwosy antihistamene.  She slept for 14 hours straight.

Packed up our beach house which finally sold. 

Got exposed to far too much flesh whilst assisting a lady in the changerooms at my newish job.  And when I say far too much flesh I mean, just her in her knickers and bra... and she need a bikini wax... from her knees up!  I am not sure I get paid enough to look at that.

Finished all my Christmas shopping.  Now I just have to post most of it back to Tasmania.

Got addicted to Handmade Ryan Gosling.

How was your weekend?

Somewhere over the Rainbow: Part Two: The Cake

Rainbow cakes really do rock! 

How pretty was that??!!

My tips on successful Rainbow Cake making:

- Make life easier for yourself and use basic butter cake mixes!  I know baking traditionalists will scoff, but I just bought 3 cake mixes (Greens), made them up, weighed them and divided them in half and ended up with perfect cakes!  In fact, I made them a week before the party (in case of a cake fail) and froze them (wrap each colour individually in glad wrap) which made it very easy to ice them on Saturday afternoon.  I popped the whole complete cake back in the fridge after icing, got it out on Sunday morning and by the time I cut into on Sunday afternoon the cakes where defrosted, the icing had set beautifully and it was really yummy - nice and light and fluffy and moist!

- My cake colours are nice and bright because I used the Wilton gel colours.  Apparently these work better that the runny liquid types which change the consistency of your cake batter and produce less intense colours.

- The icing is literally butter and icing sugar and lots of it!  To get it nice and white, whip the butter like buggery for ever and ever and then whip it even more!  I also found some white icing dye at Spotlight and added this in as well and I am really happy with the crisp, white result.  I also used a clear vanilla essence (again found at Spotlight) for some added flavour.

- I only cut a slice or two of this at the party and then had all the small people pick which colour they wanted to eat.  The cake ends up being really tall and I dread to think what all that cake and icing in one tall piece might do to a three year olds behaviour!!!

- Dont be scared to try this cake!  It really was simple to make.  It looks fantastic and has been one of the best cakes in terms of Wow Factor that I have made.

There is still some left over if anyone wants to come over for a slice!

My creative space... Rainbow Party Prep!

Even though the rainbow party is still a week or so away, the cakes had to be baked (and are now sitting colourfully frozen in the freezer)!  We are just a bit snowed under at the moment with Christmas, Birthdays, School, Prep Transition, the sale of our beach house and the need to clean it out by early December, my new job, my husbands work travel.... I could blather on but I imagine that many of us are all in the same boat, yes?

So yes, those babies got baked early and they are soooo pretty!  If you look closely in the background you can see that my baking methods rely quite heavily on drinking alcohol and baking butter cakes from packet mix (dont tell!!!).

I finished these babies too this week.... and yes they are Cloudy Rainbow Ribbon Dancing Wands!  They were quite simple to do although they involved a number of glue gun burns.  Those things are tricky to manage!

The rainbow cake and the rainbow ribbon wand tutorials can be found on my rainbow pinterest board.

You can join in 'my creative space' too if you like. 

Choc chips and sweetened condensed milk

I think the only thing to do after having a tantrum filled morning today was to bake

 and these are the yummiest choc chip cookies ever!  I always tend to eat way too much cookie mixture before they even make it into the oven!  Apart from the choc chips, I think the reason lies with the sweetened condensed milk.  I've had a fond relationship with sweetened condensed milk since my Grade 8 school camp where we went to a place called Digaloo (!!!! and yes, you really did have to dig a loo if you needed to go, which I didn't for the 3 days we were there...) and were encouraged to do our own grocery shopping for the event.  I believe my groceries consisted of chocolate, yoghurt (which of course went off) and several tubes of sweetened condensed milk!

This makes bunches if you keep your cookie balls a reasonable size.

250g butter, at room temperature

2 tsp vanilla essence

2/3 cup caster sugar

200ml of sweetened condensed milk

2 1/2 cups SR flour

375grams of choc bits

Line some baking trays with baking paper and heat up your oven to arround 180.  Using your electric mixer cream the buitter, sugar, vanilla and sweetened condensed milk till its well combined.  Add the flour and choc bits and roll into nice balls.  Pop them on your trays, give them a little press with a fork and bake away for around 12-14 minutes.  Let them cool a bit on the tray before transferring them to a wire rack.

Eat 1 or 2 or praps 3 with a nice coffee or tea and reflect on the joys a 3 year old full on tantrum in the middle of the NAB can bring you!

Just discovered this....

Tantrums are clearly exhausting!

Why this will never be a cooking and photography blog....

...because I bake $2 packet mix carrot cake for afternoon tea & take pictures of it with my iPhone.

oh, the shame

Eat your Granny Squares!

Source: sugarandmeringue.squarespace.com via Sonia on Pinterest

Oh my word!!!  What more is there to say?  Click on the linkyloo and it will take you straight to the full tutorial.  I am totes requesting these be made for my birthday next month.

At my house....

Joining in with Lou's blog this week as well... Quite the little joiner, aren't we! (Is that a movie line - maybe from 'Heathers' with Winona Ryder? Can anyone cofirm or deny?)

We have been very industrious in the kitchen today making 'chop chop' biscuits on a stick....

and being a super organised, super mum (cue manic laughter!!!) I have already organised and prepared the small peoples dinner. Porcipines on mash! Remember those: mince with rice sticking out so they look like porcipines with a tin of tomato soup dumped on top. All the little people in this house tend to eat them and ask for more so it's frequently on the menu here.

ps. for any interested parties, the 'chop chop' biscuits are out of the box (Betty Crocker baby!) and and dont forget to soak your sticks before cooking if your turing them into lolly pops like me. And my mince porcipine recipe is simply: 500grams mince, 1/2 cup rice, grated onion, salt and pepper. Mix together well and roll into small balls. Pop into a casserole dish and pour over a tin of tomato soup and a tin of water. Cover and cook for an hour or so. Careful, they are super hot when they come out!